{"id":11601,"date":"2023-03-24T13:48:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T17:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/?p=11601"},"modified":"2023-03-28T13:58:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T17:58:52","slug":"the-new-york-times-previews-alisa-weilersteins-fragments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/the-new-york-times-previews-alisa-weilersteins-fragments\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times Previews Alisa Weilerstein’s ‘Fragments’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Cellist Breaks Music Into \u2018Fragments,\u2019 Then Connects Them<\/a><\/p>\n

Alisa Weilerstein\u2019s latest project is a series of staged solo recitals that weave Bach\u2019s cello suites with newly commissioned works.<\/p>\n

By David Allen<\/p>\n

Meet \u201cFragments,\u201d a project whose first installment \u2014 of six \u2014 Weilerstein will perform at Zankel Hall on April 1. Certain aspects of it may be familiar. She will be there, playing solo. She will perform a Bach suite in its entirety, and she will play it with her typical, heartfelt passion. She will offer new music: quite a lot of it, selected from works by 27 composers she has commissioned.<\/p>\n

But this project is intended to reimagine what a cello recital can be, to challenge some of the conventions that Weilerstein thinks might inhibit a listener\u2019s immediate response to the music, and to add layers of theatricality to the arguably staid traditions of the concert hall, in an acceptance that a musician is, after all, performing on a stage.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things that classical music does uniquely well, and it\u2019s important to preserve those things,\u201d Weilerstein said. \u201cI do think, though, that we clearly have a problem, that we are not connecting with enough people, and that we are relying too much on our old models of presenting, especially when it comes to new music.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first glance, \u201cFragments\u201d might appear to be another of Weilerstein\u2019s explorations of Bach, a successor to her all-in-one-night performances of the six suites, her emotive recording of them on the Pentatone label and her pandemic streaming series. But Weilerstein thinks of it not as \u201ca new approach to Bach,\u201d she said, rather \u201ca celebration of the really disparate voices in contemporary classical music,\u201d with Bach as a common reference point.<\/p>\n

So \u201cFragments\u201d is not, thankfully, another addition to the increasingly pass\u00e9 genre of \u201cresponse\u201d programming, in which composers are commissioned to write works on the dispiriting condition that they must speak to a piece by the masters of the past. Having scoured the internet to survey the new-music scene, and consulted with past collaborators including Osvaldo Golijov and Matthias Pintscher, Weilerstein invited 28 composers to participate. The 27 who agreed \u2014 including Tania Le\u00f3n, Joan Tower, Carlos Simon and Daniel Kidane \u2014 make up a roster that is remarkably diverse demographically and stylistically, but almost all of them asked if they should write with specific reference to Bach, Weilerstein recalled. She left the choice up to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome did,\u201d she said, \u201cand some very much did not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full preview.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Cellist Breaks Music Into \u2018Fragments,\u2019 Then Connects Them Alisa Weilerstein\u2019s latest project is a series of staged solo recitals that weave Bach\u2019s cello suites with newly commissioned works. By David Allen Meet \u201cFragments,\u201d a project whose first installment \u2014 of six \u2014 Weilerstein will perform at Zankel Hall on April 1. Certain aspects of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3688,4208,3633,7179,3927,3731],"class_list":["post-11601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alisa-weilerstein","tag-bach","tag-cello","tag-fragments","tag-new-music","tag-premiere"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11602,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11601\/revisions\/11602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/11600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}